


(Spoiler: It Ends Well)

by clarkekent76



Category: All's Well That Ends Well - Shakespeare
Genre: (i am terrible at angst), Angst, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 19:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2037738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarkekent76/pseuds/clarkekent76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More or less All's Well from Helena's POV. There's an itty bitty glimpse at an epilogue in which Bertram pulls a runner (again). Helena's miffed, but not overly concerned (he'll be back).</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Spoiler: It Ends Well)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [encroix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/encroix/gifts).



> I abuse parentheses. Apologies in advance. Happy Birthday encroix! Sorry about the fade-to-black-ness of the sex scene.

Lord. Of fucking course he ran. What a nimrod.

Not that I love him less for it.

Well, I might like him less for it, but the ... other bit seems to be (has always been?) um... beyond my control.

He could have just said.

Well, I might not have taken it ... kindly, exactly.

I mean, clearly, we have some minor historical evidence proving that I can be (a little) pushy. 

 

** Before:**

I loved him. I did (I do). I mean, have you seen him?

It’s not just about seeing him. It’s not even mostly about that, I guess. He’s just—he’s Bertram. He’s always walking around, trying so so so very hard to pretend he knows what’s going on—sometimes he even does know what’s going on—and he’s always trying so hard to be the man (of the house, for his mom, for his friends) and yeah, he practically wrings his hands off of his wrists sometimes, working himself up to it, twisting his dad’s tarnished emerald ring until it seems like he’s trying to erode his finger but that’s-–gotten to the point of being almost endearing, actually.

Oh God.

I am so very, very far fucking gone.

Who the hell am I kidding? (No one, Helena. Absolutely no one). This isn’t exactly news anymore.

I have literally wandered down hallways imagining those stuttering hands gently pulling me into hugs from behind, or settling on my waist or catching my own hand and using that point of contact to draw me in. Even worse, I have definitely imagined grocery shopping with the boy. Sex dreams are vague but frequent. But, to be honest, the sex dreams are less worrying than the grocery-trip fantasies 

Look, I only know that he does not like cauliflower because his mom is... the greatest, and has just taken me under her wing completely (and this, at some point extended to her shit-talking about her son to me, which was a wonderful new door open between us but also not exactly helpful given my overactive imagination).

I may or may not have devolved to the point of actually having conversations (like, out loud) by myself about just exactly how into this kid (Bert. Bertram) I am.

I may or may not have compared him to the sun the other day.

(And I guess I’ve got an Icarus thing, because guess who wants to try flying up into the sun even though she knows she’s gonna get burned? That’s right. This girl).

I don’t even know anymore.

I do. I do know. And the main problem--I mean, aside from the fact that he practically fucking flees the room the second I enter it, unless his mom (the Countess of Rousillon. Yes. A like real-life in the flesh Countess) is there to pin him to the floor with her eyeballs (God, I love her).

Also aside from the fact that he doesn’t belong with me. That’s another whole, you know, insurmountable: he doesn’t belong with me.

I mean, I don’t belong with them.

I don’t. I’m not--I didn’t grow up with the oyster fork always on the table in front of me, I always forget whose glass is whose at dinner, and to be fair to me, I grew up in one of those tax brackets where neither of those things were Things, and I was always going to be ... I don’t know.

I don’t think Dad thought about it. And he sure as hell wasn’t ready for me to need a bra, or tampons, or dresses. Mom was an MIA pandora’s box that I did not touch because not-so-subtle hints as a child convinced me it was better left alone. She was always gone (and then later she was dead, but I never got details on the when/where/how of that), and that was that. But she clearly didn’t warn Pops much about the practicalities of raising a girl.

I think he just thought (in the most loving way possible) that he was growing a tiny him—a little assistant who would help him dig through his own medical books, always asking questions (“What does that mean? What do you do to treat that? What does DVT stand for?”), always also looking for that one slippery line that might hint at something else, that might blow this or that patient’s history wide open.

I don’t think he really planned for me to grow up.

I didn’t realize it, but he had been my only plan.  I just... assumed, I guess, that I would be his assistant. That maybe I’d study anthropology of health, or pharmacobotany, or something else that would compliment his work and that we’d be partners.

I really didn’t think he’d leave me. Pulmonary embolisms, though, apparently don’t care at all about what you think.

And that’s really the main problem--is that it’s too soon (six months, six months, six months).

Even if I could ... have Bertram--even if I could keep him—I’m not supposed to be worrying about that right now. I am not supposed to laugh when Bertram trips over himself, or when he rubs his eager hand behind his right ear (I don’t know how hands can be eager, but his just are, they’re sort of constantly-akimbo with his fingers trying to get as much space from each other as possible and they’re a little spazzy and they just always look like they’re jolting from place to place. In a good way).

This! This is what I mean! There is something wrong with me. My father is dead and the whole world is upside down--and I mean, they have been so loving and welcoming to me (even Bertram, in his awkward holding out of flowers and tissues and clearing the room “so I can have some space” because he used to have a dad too, once), and that’s not the problem at all, it’s just that my dad is gone (dead. He’s dead) and I will never see him again and that should be all I’m able to think about--the fact that the house I grew up in is empty, Dad’s books are growing dusty, that we will never badly work on a crossword puzzle over dinner again (in pen, making up incorrect answers when we give up), that he will never say “Good night, Pumpkin” again--that when I turn around to tell a horrifyingly corny joke I just heard to the one person on Earth who could spit-take laughing at it, I turn now to empty air. And every time I swoon over Bertram and his ridiculous mop of hair I know that it is a betrayal. Not because Dad would have been opposed to Bert or anything like that, just because I know that good daughters don’t forget (even for a second) that their fathers are dead just because they see a boy they are doomed never to have anyway.

I must be broken somewhere.

I wish the Countess were more of a hugger.

I could really use a pair of warm arms and a “There, there, Pumpkin. Nothing wrong with you except for your terrible pencil-chewing habit. Fetch a crossword and we’ll puzzle out a solution, you’ll see” right about now.

She thinks I’m totally broken over Dad. And I’m ... somehow not.

I am absolutely tortured by her son’s shuffling presence in the morning before he’s had his coffee, but, with Dad I’m just ... I miss him, achingly, but I’m--I’m fine (when I’m not worried about obliterating his memory by looking at Bertram).

Anyway.

Medically speaking (because clearly, my interest is purely medical), the kid has some very responsive capillaries in his hands, I can tell you that. The fingertips, knuckles, fleshy palm all white under the pressure of his own torqueing nerves, and they just flood with returning arterial blood as soon as he realizes what he’s doing and stops trying to keep himself together by tearing his hands off.

He nearly kissed me when he said goodbye.

And that (almost) wouldn't have been the first time. We grew up in each other's shadows, practically. No small wonder then, that we've:

1\.    held hands for longer than necessary, calloused fingertips ghosting over knuckles and wrist bones

2\.    accidentally gotten drunk together (Lafeu: don't leave spiced wine with fifteen year olds. They will crawl under tables together and trip/flop into each other's laps and giggle and stutter and will be somehow afraid to kiss, even hidden under the canopy of a dining room table, and later get violently ill)

3\.   and that we've never talked about the times when we have hugged only to attempt to pull back and catch ourselves almost breathing in each other's mouths and hesitating, hitched close, momentarily unable to increase the distance between each other any farther.

But maybe that--that hyper-awareness, that gravitational temptation to collapse space between until there was only contact--maybe that was just me.

But you don't know Bert. He looked about ready to piss himself (in a good way. Sort of).

I really don't think I was alone.

But maybe I made the whole fucking thing up (except he nearly kissed me to say goodbye) because now he's gone off to court.

I’m going to die a virgin and come back as one of those ghosts who can’t move on until they’ve finally banged somebody. (Wonder if we could get Bert to do the honors. Maybe then he really would piss himself).

The boy can run. Doesn’t mean I can’t follow. 

And people think I'm crying over my dead dad.

 

**II.**

Do you want the good news first, or the bad news first?

I always go bad news first (I like happy endings when possible).

The Bad News:

I am obvious as hell, apparently.

Note to Self: Do not talk to yourself out loud about your undying love for you foster mom’s/landlady’s/Countess’s son. Someone will figure shit out.

Also maybe don’t blubber over him leaving Roussillon.

And also stare less. Pro tip.

The Good News:

The Countess offered to be my mom-in-law! (I think).

 

**III.**

I am not a real person.

I cannot possibly be a real person.

I can't believe I asked for--I mean the words just walked calmly out of my mouth and I didn't even try to stop them. Not that it was a lie. Of course not. The king asks what I would like most as a reward for stitching up his fistula (Surgeons of the World: don't be condescending assholes to your patients. Actually, just don't be condescending assholes to anyone. Be nice, and if they think they’re incurable for no good reason, faking a smidge of magic is like... ethically justifiable, I think) and I just said, out loud, in front of everyone, "Bertram."

I claimed him.

Oh God. I didn't use his title or anything. I might have just called him Bert. 

Because that is what I wanted. The King called me worthy of anything I might desire and--

And I just didn't know that there was a world in which it could ever have been an option (I wanted and wanted, but even after the Countess gave me her blessing, basically, I didn’t—I couldn’t actually bring myself to believe that it might be possible) but there I was, holding the King's hand for doing nothing spectacular or glamorous (fistulas, people. Fistulas), wearing the King’s gold and ruby ring as a token of his gratitude, and the world in which I could have Bert--the world in which I could keep him--was right there.

And all I had to do was ask.

So of course I asked.

And here I am, alone, with Bert’s words ringing in my ears: “I cannot love her, nor will I strive to.” 

I tried to take it back because I was wrong.

I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong. I thought—I thought that I could become worthy—I thought it was something that I could work at, and maybe fail at, but that I could one day attempt again. Between the King and his mom and that fatal instinct for hope, I really thought—maybe some part of me just wanted so badly to become good enough, that I convinced myself I could--

But he thought (knew) different.

Of course he didn’t want me. I have done one good thing in my entire life (and even then, maybe for the wrong reasons), but he knew that my one thing did not (does not) change who I am--who I was born to be: nothing and no one.

Well. It's done now.

The king screamed at him—shamed him—practically threatened to kill or exile him in front of the entire court, and that (not me, not me, nothing to do with me) made Bert grudgingly--jaw clenched, eyes hard—obey (marry me).

I couldn’t look at him. This was not what I wanted.

Because this was standing in front of everyone, telling myself over and over “I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry,” while the king said “take her by the hand and tell her she is thine.”

Bert took my hand. Silently.

If I could have willed myself into the ground at that moment I would have, but I couldn’t (I can’t) and the King clasped our hands together with his meaty, clammy ones and promised Bertram land to make up for having to marry me, and after he made his declaration, Bertram pulled away shaking.

And now he's mine, and I'm his (legally).

I regret everything. 

In this particular instance, "everything" is huge and swirling and happens to mean Bert flying off to war (the kind with bullets and terrible field medicine and too many ways to die) because apparently that (a gruesome bloody death) is more appealing than staying here and being married to me.

We didn't even consummate.

Barely even kissed—only contractually, only as a legal punctuation when they hauled us up before the priest to make sure that I wasn’t just his worst nightmare when I could also be his cross to bear.

But I didn’t know that yet.

After throwing a fit in court--once it was done--for a minute there he was almost kind.

He sent me away and I asked (I hate myself for asking but I had to: you don’t get anywhere staying silent and waiting for people to just magically know what you want. Not that I’ve gotten anywhere by asking yet. Hope will slaughter me slowly, I guess)—I could barely get the words out—

I asked for a kiss.

He left a note. A fucking note.

“’Til I have no wife, I have nothing in France.”

I drove him to it.

I pushed too hard and asked for too much (and, oh God, his mom is gonna be devastated), and now he's going to die.

Because of me.

Because he couldn't stand to be married to me.

I got us (me) all wrong.

And I don't want to, but I can't help it: I can see him lying on some field with an M of his own blood drawn on his forehead (“he got the morphine, Doc, but it's not going to be enough”), gasping, hands shaking to press where it hurts except it looks like where it hurts is everywhere and his arms aren't being cooperative anyway, jerking against invisible restraints. And the vision ripples because my ribs are trying to strangle me and there's stinging behind my eyes and a sledgehammer crushing my chest and I'm dripping on his letter and I can't breathe because what the fuck have we done?

What the fuck have I done?

I can't be this boy's (Bert's--darling infuriating precious horrible Bert's) executioner.

“’Til I have no wife, I have nothing in France.”

I have to leave.

I just, I will pack a bag--nothing more than I can carry--jewelry? I’m definitely taking the king’s ring (It’s the only proof I have right now that someone thought I did good. Lonely-ass Exhibit A). Might be able to pawn it and besides, I don't exactly have that much free floating cash on me at the moment (I didn't plan for this either. Couldn't have imagined it until it happened) and clothes and I'll wear my sturdy boots--and I can leave notes too.

I have to tell the Countess (Mom). She's only ever been kind, and taken me in and she deserves to know not to worry about me, and I will miss her, but I refuse to be responsible in any way for her son's death (for Bert's death).

God, I'll miss her.

I lace up my boots.

Time to get lost.

 

**IV.**

My life is a joke.

My whole life is a fucking joke.

It must be.

God is real and fate is real and they have both decided that they want me to be wherever I can see Bert hating me, I guess.

Also: This war is (thankfully) also a joke.

It’s just a million officers dicking around (read: chasing skirts) as far as the eye can see.

Which brings us to the latest evidence of Bert’s hatred for me: Bert’s apparently done nothing but chase some improbably beautiful laundress since he got here.

That dick.

 

**V.**

This is painful.

Why did I think this was a good idea? (It’s not. I deluded myself)

Because now I have to watch Bert fling himself at Diana--he DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HER NAME! which does make me feel more justified about this whole scheme—

And I would like to feel justified.

But I don’t have to.

I know I don’t have to feel justified about this, because even though I don’t know that this is right—and I can only hope that it will work out—I’m here. I already asked Diana and her mom, and she is already talking Bert in and haggling for the ring (she’s so smart! God, she’s great), and we’re here and we’re here and this is happening and apparently I want to win (him) more than I want to be good or just or right.

I mostly just want to have Bertram back.

I also don’t want to live in Florence as a pilgrim forever. I don’t want to be shunned out of Roussillon and the only mother I have known, and I don’t want to be laughed at and pitied because the whole world apparently knows that my husband had to be forced to marry me (and hates me).

I just want—I just want Bert and I to be happy together (really together) and home and safe (I want Bert to be safe).

And I want him to love me.

(And I would also really really like to bang him).

I realize that this is a lot of things to want, but God (or something) walked my feet here, and what I want is right in front of me (again), practically begging me to reach out and take it.

He said he wouldn’t accept me until I could get his ring from him. And all I want is for us to be what I think (believe) we could.

He won’t give it to me, so I’ll find a way to take it.

Thanks, Diana.

 

**VI.**

Well. I ---

We are really really good at that.

Maybe "good" is the wrong word, but

wow.

It was dark and mostly nearly silent--I was too scared of breaking the spell to speak--and he was so frantic at first, pacing--pulling his hair and not-touching.

I'm not sure if the boy (Bert, Bert, Bert) even breathed.

But then all at once he seemed to vault over himself--

his hands were cradling my face and we were very definitely kissing--breathing in each other's air.

Ok, there was definitely some ... fumbling, and grabbing too harshly (and then, afraid, hardly at all) and ... momentary discomfort, followed almost instantly by a tiny breathless "sorry" from above and Bert's lips grazing gently over my neck.

And a real marriage--me slipping Bert's ring--dark and heavy in the no-light--off of his finger and onto my thumb, and placing my ring--golden and warm--on his pinkie (and even then, barely)--fingers slipping and weaving into each other's grips. Palm to palm.

And then it was all hushed hitches of breath and warmth and--

banging. definite banging.

wow.

yup.  

Like, really. Just ... _thank you, Diana._

 

**VII.**

Some part of me is ashamed for using Diana--for asking her to travel, to do me this favor, to risk herself for the sake of Bert letting us be ourselves (and married).  

But also.

But.

Also.

Bert's face when he saw me (still alive) was like dawn breaking, but you know, with tears and trembly hands and then another one of those searing hugs launching itself at me, impatient to get contact--to glide skin along skin--nose along neck, mouths barely not-touching at all.

I felt myself relaxing, easing out of nervous tremors--giving up the burden of doubt and fear into the breath I floated into Bert’s ear: “I missed you, too.”

I can't believe I actually just pulled out Bert's letter and quoted it at him.

I also can't believe that Bert's idea of "double checking if Helena is really alive/got my ring/banged me" turns out to involve a lot more banging.

What a good idea.

I will yell at him for having been an uber dick later.

 

**After:**

Well, we got home fine (last year). And Bert did not re-enlist (thank you, God), but he does leave passive-aggressive (pleading? To be honest, I can’t always tell until I catch up with him) notes all over the house.

And now he's run off and left another one. again. That little shit.

To be fair to my (ridiculous) darling Bert:

I may or may not have invited Diana and her mom to come stay with us. He didn't say anything exactly, he just sort of made the not-quite-scrunched face he makes when he is totally fine with the plan. Yes. No, honestly. Totally TOTALLY 1000000% fine with the plan.

So today I come home and suddenly Bertram apparently

> “needs to take care of something on Mom’s estate, and it’s just so much easier if I happen to be there to do that. So. LOVE YOU TONS!!! Be back on Wednesday! Xoxoxxoxoxo :) <3 !”

Wednesday. Coincidentally, precisely the day after Diana and her mom are scheduled to leave.

He always draws too many hearts and things at the ends of his notes when he’s nervous.

That (hilarious, adorable, apparently knock-kneed) little shit.

I didn't exactly expect him to be pleased with Diana coming to stay, but you can't leave notes and run away EVERY TIME.

It's ok.

When he gets back (and he will be back because I _know_ he remembers what happened last time), he's going to apologize and pinkie swear to give me the note in person next time--to stick around to have a conversation about whatever it is--and I'm gonna make him do that thing with his tongue again.

And we'll be fine.

I may also make him eat cauliflower for a week.


End file.
